Taken 02/02/09, near my college in Cambridge, UK.
There's something about the bicycles:
stolid in the cold, over-snowed
by the languid back of winter. Femurs
disenjointed, forgotten for the now,
unattended; they surreptitiously
lean against the rails. As though
they were yearning, almost, towards
flesh. Once in a while I walk past
the carcasses chained in a row, illuminated
by the dark pearlescent glow of sludge;
and I think I know, I think I almost know
how they feel, waiting and wanting,
slumbering until some warm hands might
wake and lead them, trembling,
into the sun.
That there their rusted tendons
might unfurl, their dis-oiled vertebrae
critch-critch-crack and find their stride
in that unsteady graceless romp
that in its glad momentum discovers
something, if not freedom, then quite like it --
in short, that their old bones might feel again
(if they remember how).
